By age 25, he wa appointed chair of natural philosopy at University of Aberdeen. He wasn't juat a professor: he was the head of the entire department.
Maxwell was born in 1831 in Edinburgh, Scotland to a wealthy scottish family. He published his first academic paper, a new method of mechanically plotting mathematical curves using a piece of twine, at the age of 14.
Maxwell was born in 1831 in Edinburgh, Scotland to a wealthy scottish family. He published his first academic paper, a new method of mechanically plotting mathematical curves using a piece of twine, at the age of 14.
Ok, listen everyone! Maxwell was born in 1831 in Edinburgh, Scotland to a wealthy scottish family. He published his first academic paper, a new method of mechanically plotting mathematical curves using a piece of twine, at the age of 14.
Using math, Maxwell showed that the only way the rings of saturn was if theey were made of lots and lots of tiny particles, each one acting as an independent satellite. Maxwell also predicted that the rings would spread apart gradually until they disappeared because of the effects of Saturn's gravity. More than a hundred years later, the Voyager probes would fly by Saturn and send back some pictures proving that he was totally right.
Within the next couple pf years he made a discpvery that you probably learned about in grade school: he showed that Saturns rings were made of small particles.
He figured out that all of these things were connected by observing how magnets could affect currents, and currents could affect magnets. He theorized that they were doing that with electromagnetic waves, which spread out through space from their point of origin potentially forever. Since nothing is as fast as light, that meant electromagnetic waves and light must actually be different forms of the same thing.
He published a set of equations now known as Maxwell's Equations, and proved that light, electricity, and magnetism all came from the same force: what we now call the electromagnetic force. When Maxwell published his equations, electrons wouldn't be discovered for another 30 years.